Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II

Release Date: July 14, 2020Presales available for members only. To purchase this title, please log in or join now.

The chilling dawn of WWII

For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the brutal features that would come to define the war—blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing—yet it is routinely overlooked by historians.

In Poland 1939, Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the devastating conflict to come.